September 21, 2024 • 59 mins
Sunaura Taylor is an artist, writer, activist, academic and mother. Sunaura is the Assistant Professor in the Division of Society and Environment and the director of the Disabled Ecologies Lab at the University of California, Berkely. A skilled artist, her artworks have been exhibited at venues such as the CUE Art Foundation, a contemporary art space in New York City, the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum, education, and research complex and they are a part of the Berkeley Art Museum collection. Sunaura is also the author of Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, which received the American Book Award. Her current book is, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert and whilst it’s not a memoir, it is personal and political. She documents how residents organized one of the earliest and most successful environmental justice movements in the USA. Sunaura is a game changer, a global thinker, she brings together what environmental and disability movements can learn from one another. Her books reveal how disability and ableism shape our understanding of nature and environmental crisis. She uncovers networks of disability, both human and wild, that are created when ecosystems are corrupted and profoundly altered. Sunaura raises an important question we should all be asking in the name of shared justice, “What happened to us?” Not, what happened to you? This is someone with an incredible eye for detail, for whom painting is a love of seeing and whose political statements are also drawn from sharp observation, analysis and lived experience. Sunaura also has a critical understanding of curiosity cultivated in her alternative childhood education of being 'unschooled.'
Sunaura Taylor
Aquifer Losing Reach, Speculative Aquifers Series
Pen and Watercolor on Paper, apx 11 x 8’’, 2017-2020
Sunaura Taylor
Animals With Arthrogryposis
Oil on Canvas, 6’ x 9’ (72“ x 108”), 2009
Author Photo © Julius Schlosberg
Discover Sunaura Taylor: www.sunaurataylor.net/
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Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to thispodcast series asking the
question, Can art save us? I'mstarting the first national and
international conversation aboutcourage and curiosity. What do
these qualities really mean, andwhy does it make a big
difference to our mental,societal and democratic health?
I talk to award winning anddiverse artists across the arts
(00:24):
to explore these qualities intheir lives and work both to
inspire and for us all to learn.I'm exploring why we need these
qualities to help change theglobal epidemic of mental
illness, loneliness,polarization of our communities
and even global conflict. If thearts cultivate courage and
curiosity, I'm asking thequestion, Can art save us? My
(00:50):
guest today is an artist,writer, activist, academic and
Mother Sunaura Taylor is theAssistant Professor in the
Division of Society andEnvironment and the Director of
the Disabled Ecologies lab atthe University of California
Berkeley. A skilled artist herartworks have been exhibited at
venues such as the CUE ArtFoundation, a contemporary art
(01:13):
space in New York City, theSmithsonian Institution, the
world's largest museum,education and research complex,
and they are part of theBerkeley Art Museum collection.
Sunaura is also the author ofBeasts of Burden, Animal and
Disability Liberation, whichreceived the American Book
Award. Her current book isDisabled Ecologies, Lessons from
(01:36):
a Wounded Desert. And whilstit's not a memoir, it is
personal and political, shedocuments how residents organize
one of the earliest and mostsuccessful environmental justice
movements in the USA. In thiswork, Sunaura is a game changer,
a global thinker, she bringstogether what environmental and
(01:57):
disability movements can learnfrom one another. Her books
reveal how disability andableism shape our understanding
of nature and environmentalcrisis. She uncovers networks of
disability, both human and wild,that are created when ecosystems
are corrupted and profoundlyaltered. Sunaura raises an
(02:19):
important question we should allbe asking, in the name of shared
justice, what happened to us,not what happened to you? This
is someone with an incredibleeye for detail, for whom
painting is a love of seeing,and whose political statements
are also drawn from sharpobservation, analysis and lived
(02:40):
experience, a guest we have muchto learn from. I'm delighted to
have Sunaura Taylor here with ustoday. Hello Sunaura, and
welcome.
Hello Paula. Thank you so muchfor that lovely introduction and
for having me on the show. I'mso excited about to talk to you.
Oh, I'm so pleased. I'm verypleased. And thank you again,
because listeners willappreciate that you have a time
(03:05):
difference with me here in theUK, so thank you again. Yeah,
yeah. Well, it's perfectly goodright now. It's only it's, you
know, early in the day, so we'regood.
To begin with Sunaura, when I wasresearching your, you know, your
life, your career, your work, Iwas really interested to read
about your childhood educationon being what's called
(03:28):
'unschooled'because there was anemphasis on developing natural
curiosity, and curiosity is aquality I'm very interested in.
So I wondered if you could tellus about unschooled and whether
that's a stamp of liberation,which has become a theme in your
life and work, or a guidingforce?
(03:51):
Yeah, yeah. So I love talkingabout my unschooled experience.
So I was very lucky to be raisedby two amazing parents who,
really, you know, had a sort ofsort of radical vision of how
(04:14):
they wanted to create space andspace for curiosity for us kids,
so there's four of us, and we,yeah, we, we, we, we stayed home
and and, and learned at home,but also out in our community,
kind of and, and with a group ofa group of families, unschooling
(04:38):
is essentially the philosophythat that kids innately learn
that they are, you know, andthey are innately curious. And
so if, if we can createenvironments where that
curiosity can flourish, andwhere those kids, where kids
have the means to. Choose whatthey're curious about, that they
(05:03):
will kind of develop a love forlearning, you know. And I think
this sort of education is, youknow, we were so privileged in a
lot of ways. You know, we werefinancially well off enough that
my mom, my mom could stay homewith us and do this. My dad also
(05:24):
was, like, quite involved. So,so whenever I talk about it, I'm
also like, you know, I'm, I wantto kind of preface it with, you
know, there were a lot ofconditions that allowed, allowed
my parents to do this that don'twork for everyone you know, but
for for us, and I thinkspecifically for me, I'm a
(05:46):
disabled person. I was adisabled kid. You know, my
experiences that I did try inpublic school were were hard
because my parents always gaveus the option. You know, part of
it is about about kids, kidsbeing respected as as people
with opinions and and desiresand and and and things that they
(06:10):
want to do, right? And so partof that was also giving us the
option to try school. And youknow, for me, that was
particularly challenging as adisabled kid in Georgia in the
1980s and 90s, you know? So,yeah, so my so, so my parents
created this environment for uswith just incredible amounts of
(06:35):
free time, which now I miss verymuch, and just a lot of
creativity around my My parentsare both extremely creative,
project oriented people. So, youknow, my mom was always painting
or writing, writing books orwriting stories or making,
(06:55):
making theatrical productionsor, you know, and my dad is a
composer and a scientist. So Iso even when they weren't
directly being engaged with us,I was learning from them about
making projects and about beingcurious. Yeah.
So as you were saying, it's theconditions being right. And of
course, you were in a very richenvironment, yes,
(07:19):
yeah. I was in a very richenvironment, and, you know, I
had siblings who were also verycurious. So, so I would say, you
know, that that I'm extremelygrateful for that, that
upbringing, because it reallyallowed for me to discover the
(07:41):
things that I remain to be, thesort of the things that I that I
love. I love writing, I love Ilove drawing and art making. I
love reading. But I also, Ithink what it really gave to me
is a sense of how to commit andself sort of navigate my, my,
(08:08):
my, my curiosities, and kind ofgo with it, go with the flow of
those curiosities, and, and,and, and take them seriously. So
it was a really, it was, it wasreally fun. And of course, there
were drawbacks too, you know,but it was, it was, I think for
me, it was a really helpful wayof of being raised, and
(08:31):
definitely that that thatphilosophy of of being a self
directed learner is even now, assomeone who you know is in I'm
in my 40s, I am academic, youknow, but I still really feels,
feels like those kind of guidingprinciples are kind of how I
(08:54):
continue to do my research.Yeah,
I did imagine that byhaving that opportunity to
cultivate those Freer thinkingskills, it establishes an
independence and also anopenness to investigation. And
of course, that follows throughwith your academic work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.And you know, I one of the one
(09:18):
of the things that I reallyvalue about it is, is just the
way that there, there, therewasn't someone sort of telling
me, like, Oh, this is, you know,this is an interesting idea that
you're thinking about, but youneed to study it in this way. Or
actually, that's not a relevantthing that you should be
thinking about. You should bethinking about these other
(09:39):
things that are more importantto your, you know, to your
education or something, thereweren't, there weren't those
kinds of forces. And so I thinkI, I had a real strong sense of,
like, you know, the the thenerdy, kind of obsessive things
that kids can be kind ofinterested in, then really, can
kind of flourish into. Uh, youknow, the real questions can
(10:04):
emerge from those things, and,and, and, and so I think that
having those be respected andtaken seriously was, was was
pretty, was pretty rare. And Ifeel very, very privileged and
and lucky to have gotten toexperience that. Yeah, it
was fascinating to read aboutthat. And I also read that you
(10:27):
grew up in a household that youdescribe as full of artists and
anti war activists. And that wasalso, yeah, that was also
interesting, because it feltthat that positive influence of
activism in your family wasperhaps another guiding force
that's helped you build your ownresilience, and particularly
(10:51):
when you're challenging ableism,for example, in a world that
creates disability and you'reraising new questions, you're
perhaps, yeah, drawing on thatpositive sense of activism.
Yeah,
I mean, I think on, on a on areally deep level, right, one of
the things that, you know,growing up in, in a in a family
(11:12):
that had an awareness of, youknow, what kind of world they
wanted to live in, what kind ofworld, world and they wanted
their, their kids to grow up in,and just social justice issues
more broadly, but then also incombination with unschooling, is
that I feel like I grew up in anenvironment where questions of
(11:36):
ethics and justice were werereally valued as sort of things
to really spend your timewondering about as, really, you
know, as as, as questions that,again, even if they come through
the the mind of a child youknow, are, you know, why is
(11:56):
there war? Why, for me as adisabled kid, you know, why is,
Why is the world like, why do Ifeel like the world is not built
for me or my my siblings and Ialso all became very interested
in, you know, animal animalrights and animal justice issues
that at young age, at a youngage, and those questions also of
(12:20):
just like, What is, what is,what is cruelty, and what does
it mean to to live with otheranimals, and how do we treat
other animals like those kindsof questions were really taken
we were allowed to take thosequestions seriously as a kid.
And to some extent, I feel likemany of the questions that I am
(12:41):
still asking are questions thatI had as a kid, and I've just
like continued followingfollowing them in different
ways.
Yeah, yeah, that's reallyinteresting, and I understand
that actually picking up onthose questions, it was during
your master's, your fine artdegree, that you started to
think about disability beyondthe human body, and about animal
(13:05):
industries and those mergingrealities. I wondered for
listeners, if you'd like toshare more about that foundation
that was beginning to develop inyour art practice at that time.
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll saythat you know, so I had a sort
of like on, to some extent, Ihad some political awareness of
(13:30):
of of disability from my ownbackground and history that I
can talk about that relates moreto my, my present book of like
my, my disability was caused byby pollution and and it was, you
know, a so I had, I had this, Ihad this understanding that
(13:50):
disability is political in that,in that way that, like I that
disability wasn't an individualmedical problem, but that, you
know, it was a social justiceissue, right that it could be
caused by these systems of harm.But I didn't actually come into,
like, political disabilitycommunity and begin thinking
about ableism and disability andAccess and Disability Rights or
(14:13):
justice until I was quite a bitolder. I always intuitively,
kind of hoped that somethingexisted. But I, you know, again,
I grew up in, you know, acollege town in Georgia, and,
like, you know, pre and thenearly days of the internet, so
it wasn't that easy to find. Andso I didn't discover, you know,
really critical disabilitycommunity until I was in my
(14:37):
early 20s, whereas, for animalanimal activism, you know, I
think from the very beginning,when I realized, when I kind of
had this, you know, epiphany,you know, that people, you know,
essentially exploit, use animalsfor different things, I also
knew that there were people whowere organizing and to who were.
(15:00):
Kind of active in in the thestruggle to kind of think about
animals differently. And so whenI was a MFA student, you know,
in my 20s, I was really justkind of having this incredible
awakening to disabilitycommunity out here in the Bay
(15:20):
Area where I was getting my MFA,which, you know, in this in the
States, many people say, is thehome of the disability rights
movement. There was a lot ofdisability rights history here
and so and at the same time, Iwas painting these massive
paintings of animal of, youknow, animals essentially in
(15:41):
slaughterhouses or factoryfarms. And so those, those two
different things that I, that Iwas caring about very deeply,
that on some level, you know,were separate in my art studio,
they, they started really comingtogether. And I realized through
research for the paintings, justhow much the animals that I was
(16:06):
painting were, well, manydifferent things, but one of
them, on a really materiallevel, is that the animals that
I was painting were allessentially disabled. Animals
are, you know, these, theseindustries are very disabling
industries, right? And animalsare bred in ways that, you know,
create a lot of profitabilityand like, are able to commodify
(16:32):
animals better through, youknow, creating animals that make
more milk or make more meat orwhatever, but then that harms
their bodies in other ways. Andso I realized that I was
essentially, you know, paintingdisabled animals. And that
really got me thinking aboutwhat other kinds of
relationships there might bebetween sort of ableism and
(16:54):
speciesism. And I startedresearching it a lot. And, you
know, ultimately wrote,ultimately wrote a whole book
about it. But I think that thatthat actually is kind of a good
example of how my practice attimes has has developed, which
is that at you know, at some atthe beginning stages, they are
(17:17):
often just drawings andpaintings where different kind
of seemingly disparate ideas arekind of coming together. And
then I take those ideas veryseriously and research them and
explore them, and think aboutlike, why, why are these coming
together? And what do they haveto to say to each other? And
then that ultimately kind ofinforms my my academic research
(17:39):
too. Yeah,
yeah. So the art practice andyour academic work are both
sharing that exploration, if youlike, in terms of
interconnections between theoppression of animals the
oppression of disabled people,whether that's visually through
your artwork or, of course,through your thinking and
(17:59):
academic research. Yes, yeah,yeah. So it'd be interesting to
talk about both of the booksactually mentioned in the
introduction, and perhaps if wetouch on Beasts of Burden prior
to your current book, just tofollow on from what you were
just saying. That was veryinteresting in terms of how you
(18:23):
could focus exactly on what youwere just saying, how factory
farmed animals are forciblydisabled through confinement.
There's visible barriers forthat confinement, for example,
is this how you began to equate,if you like the idea of
barriers, we talk aboutstructural barriers in our in
(18:44):
our in society, in our lives,that may be invisible or less
visible, but nevertheless theyare barriers. They're denying
inclusion, and they're denyingrights. So there
are kind of many very variousdifferent trails that I'm kind
of following that book, or ideasthat I'm thinking about.
(19:04):
I mean, certainly kind of
the barriers, both, you know,actual very physical barriers,
of cages or lack of access, arewhat I'm thinking about in that
book. But I'm also thinking ofthe sort of ideological barriers
right of of barriers that keeppeople, keep systems, keep
(19:32):
systems of power fromconsidering those that are lay,
lie outside of the norms, right?Of those that are are sort of
historically have been included,okay, well, maybe one of the
ways that I can talk about it isthat, so, you know, there's
(19:53):
these various capacities thathave long been sort of held up
in western so. Science in inphilosophy, as the capacities
that essentially make one abeing with rights, make one a
person, make one, you know, abeing that one should have moral
(20:15):
regard towards. And thosecapacities have to do with
rationality, with differentideas about language, with ideas
of who has a sense of self,these various capacities that,
like philosophers and scientistshave long debated, that have
been used essentially, if welook historically, to keep
(20:39):
different groups out of this,the the realm of, you know, the
the individual, the rightsbearing individual, which, of
course, historically, has been,you know, a white, able, able
bodied, educated, propertyowning able bodied man, right?
(21:04):
And so those so we can look atthese different capacities and
the way in which they have beenheld up to exclude all sorts of
different populations of andcommunities of human beings in
different times and places, ofcourse, and also the way in
which those capacities have beenheld up to exclude from
(21:27):
consideration and moral concernother other species, right? That
other being that there's oftenthese arguments of, oh, well,
animals don't have this or thatcapacity so it's it's not
morally wrong to to harm them.And of course, these capacities
are capacities that are alsoableist capacities, because they
(21:51):
are capacities that that somedisabled people do not always
have right. And so I'm lookingat that. Part of what this book
does is that I'm looking at thathistory of the way why these
certain kinds of capacities havebeen so
(22:12):
valued, and the purpose of them
is often, of course, to thenexclude or justify other forms
of exclusion. And sospecifically, in this book, I'm
looking at how these, how thissort of idealization of these,
of these capacities, then harmsboth disabled people and non
(22:34):
human animals. And I alwaysreally try to make really clear
that this book is I, in no way,am I, you know, I'm really
careful that the book is not acomparison. It's not saying
disabled people are like animalsor animals are like disabled
people, but rather that thesystems of oppression that have
(22:55):
sort of hold up these kinds ofspeciesist and ableist ideas of
what gives one value areconnected, if that makes sense.
So that's, that's one of thethings that it does, but it's
also, and then I'll stoprambling, but the book also, you
know, disability communities andanimal and animal rights
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communities have actuallyhistorically been really pitted
against each other for a wholevariety of reasons, and so part
of what the book is also doingis exploring why that is, and
then trying to make this othercase that actually they have a
whole lot to offer each other.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Sothere's a very clear
(23:39):
distinction, isn't there. It'snot about being confined to a
disabled body like an animal ina cage, as you, as you
mentioned, it's very much aboutlooking at what the oppressive
systems are, or value systemsare that are creating those
confinements or thosedisabilities. And you and you've
(24:00):
been looking at those, thoseinterconnections, yes,
I
love that way of framing it.Thank you. Yes, okay,
just, just checking that I amdoing you justice in terms of my
own understanding.
Yeah, yeah, no. I
think that's a wonderful way,way of framing it. You
know that this is, thisis not a sort of like, Oh, the
(24:21):
poor, suffering disabled peopleare similar to the suffering
animals. Like, not at all. Thatis not what I'm talking about.
But yes, looking at thesesystems of exploitation and
systems of oppression and andhow, you know, the the different
ways in which they there, theyhave impacted different
(24:41):
communities, human and nonhuman.
Yeah, and I was interested,actually, in terms of some of
your paintings, some of yourartwork, where you have been
depicting animals, you've alsoincluded your self portraits and
with other animals. I waswondering whether this was
(25:03):
before Beasts of Burden, thesame time or following, because
I was interested in whatdifferent types of reactions you
may have had from what peoplecould experience visually from
your artwork, or in comparisonto reading that particular book,
Beasts of Burden, absolutely.
(25:25):
Yeah.
So the artworks, it reallydepends. Some of them were kind
of emerging in the you know,before, before Beast of
Burden, actually, before Ireally started writing it. And
then some of them, kind of like,were created alongside of so,
(25:46):
kind of, to speak to what I whatmentioned earlier, that really
is sort of part of my practice,even as I'm writing to like,
continue to essentially like,let the ideas be playful with
each other too, right? And to,you know, I'm even, if I'm doing
very sort of rigorous, you know,quote, unquote rigorous
(26:06):
historical research, or archivalresearch, or whatever it is, to
also have that sort of art, thecreative practice, where I don't
have to kind of censor myself interms of, like, what, what is
sensible, or what is rational,or what, what is worthy of
(26:27):
research, but actually to justsort of explore the ideas as
they come together. And so thesethe the artworks, you know,
there's, there's a lot ofdifferent bodies of work that I
could talk about, but I do, it'strue, I often have this
caricature of myself that Ibring into these pictures of of
(26:49):
of other, of other animals. Soyou know myself in chicken cages
or marching with chickens, or inthe Arctic with, with, with,
with, with, with ox or with,with, with polar bears, or my
body kind of echoing the shapeof a manatees body, body. So
(27:12):
there's a lot of different waysin which my sort of caricature
kind of continuously emerges.You know, I there one of the
things about dealing with, aboutexploring a topic that is so
delicate, right? Is that Iunderstood, you know, really
(27:33):
early on, when I was writingthis book, that these are topics
that can be, be really, thathave such harmful histories,
right? The history ofanimalization and dehumanization
of non white peoples, ofdisabled peoples, you know,
these are of women, right? Theseare, these can be really brutal
(28:00):
histories, and and and and thathave that aren't only
historical, right, that stillhave, that that still really
have power. And so I'm, I wasvery careful to to try,
throughout writing visa burdenand in my artworks, to be
(28:22):
attentive to the kind of ways inwhich animals, animals have been
weaponized as insults, right?And so I think for me, part of
part of doing exploring that wasthat I was like, Well, I you
(28:44):
know, I need to, if I'm going tobe talking about these issues,
then, like I need to bevulnerable in bringing in and
basically bringing myself intoit, and exploring my own
relationship to animality, whichI know is, you know, a very
specific a relationship. Youknow, I'm, I'm a white woman. I
(29:09):
don't have particular languagebarriers, right? I don't have
intellectual disability. There'sall these ways in which my
relationship to animality. Andthinking about my relationship
to animals is also informed bymy privilege as as as it is also
(29:30):
informed by the sort ofconnections that I feel be as a
disabled person, that I don'tuse my arms, I use my mouth for
most things. And so some of myartwork has also been just about
the way that the mouth has, the mouth is animalized, right
and or not, you know, not beingable to walk upright, not being
(29:54):
able to use my opposable thumbsin the way that a human being,
you know, is. Is, is, istypically sort of imagined as,
as being able to and those,those kinds of actual, very
physical connections I explorein my work, both as and most
(30:16):
often like as actual placeswhere, where I have felt, not
not shame, but actuallyconnection, right, when I have a
part in Beasts of Burden, where Italk about my, my beloved dog
who's no longer with us, but howhe used to make his his bed by,
you know, grabbing the blanketin his mouth and kind of
(30:38):
adjusting it, making a nest,and, and how much sort of, yeah,
just connection that I felt tohim as another creature using
his mouth for things. So yeah,so I explored in a lot of
different ways, but those aresome of some of the some of the
different kinds of things
that I'm thinking about. Yeah,
it's incredibly interesting,especially replacing shame with
(31:02):
connection, which you know issuch a valuable way of thinking
about difference. And you alsomentioned vulnerability, because
I think it's very courageous forany artist to even use
themselves as a subject, even ifit's as a self portrait or to
draw attention to something intheir artwork, that's also a
(31:27):
courageous act, as is activism.It often requires courage, and I
was also interested in terms ofpaintings when I was actually
looking at your win Newhouseawards submissions earlier on in
your career. And there were anumber of impressive oil
(31:48):
paintings, I think, of friendspeople you know, the attention
to detail really leaps out. Andyou were talking about how your
mouth taught you to see, and howyour wheelchair taught you to
watch. Yeah, well, you did,
you did some good research,because I don't even remember
(32:09):
what was in those submissions.
It was a lovely, lovely read. it was, it was really
interesting. I'll quote you as areminder. "I see so many things
most people don't get theopportunity to really see." You
were talking about how youlearned to see detail, "to pay
(32:33):
attention to my visual world,to, in effect, fall in love with
the act of seeing. That's whatmy mouth taught me."
Yeah, okay, now it's coming backto me.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I
mean, I, you know, I
(32:53):
don't use my hands, so I paint,yeah, I paint with a brush in my
mouth, or, you know, or a pen,and so my eyes are, you know,
very, very close to the page.Now that I'm in my 40s, I have
to say the blurry vision issetting in So,
(33:15):
but
yeah, you know, and actually Iwrite in my newer book about
just the way in which, sort ofseeing, for me as someone who
also doesn't, you know, touch isnot my first I don't have a
desire, like, I don't have thissort of, like a desire to touch
(33:35):
things necessarily, right? Likefor me, seeing, really is a form
of touch and and I write aboutthat in my new book, in in terms
of also, just like theenvironmental imagination, like
what that kind of way ofobserving can't has, has taught
(33:55):
me about a sort of my, mydisabled relationship to to the
environment. So, so while I'mnot painting quite as quite as
much as I used to, you know, Ithink that the I've kind of
that, the way in which seeinginforms my work
has has remained
(34:17):
really, really important. And,you know, I think to go to go
back to your first questionabout unschooling, right? You
know, I was a nerdy kid wholoved old, you know, dead
painters. I spent a lot of time,you know, just pouring over pre
(34:41):
raphaelite art and Goya and, youknow, just all the Rembrandt. I
mean, just really, just hours.Learning from
the masters of oil painting.
Yeah, learning from oilpaintings, you know,
essentially, and and that isreally what I loved for a
(35:05):
really, really, really longtime. And so I spent a, you
know, a lot of my, a lot of myyoung adult life, just, you
know, immersing myself in that,in that reality, but then very
much aware of how my specificembodiment was also informing my
(35:26):
what you know aspects of or howI wanted to paint and off of
what I wanted to paint.
Yeah, yeah. And so, havingmentioned your current book,
I'll just for the listenersstate the title again, Disabled
Ecologies Lessons from a WoundedDesert is the current book, and
(35:51):
this obviously has relevance toall of your prior work, but I
felt that this was considered avery clear call to action, and
it was very much understandingthis time, our collective time
now, as the age of disability,and the importance of learning
(36:14):
from the disability movementthat actually survival isn't
simply about the survival of thefittest.
Yeah, no, it, I think thatthat's, that's a, an important
read on it, that this, that youknow, my, my hope with this
(36:39):
project is that it can give us alanguage to talk, to talk about
what is increasingly happeningto our beautiful world, right
that, but you know, there we areconstantly bombarded with news
of fires, of floods, of youknow, of rising sea levels and
(37:03):
the injuries that that occurfrom that right, not only to
human beings, but to our youknow, our ecosystems are the the
animals that we live with. Andso I this book is really trying
(37:23):
to to give us a language to tograpple with this sort of multi
species disablement that is allaround us with the climate and
extinction catastrophes that weare all living with and
yes, a call to action to bringdisability to take disability
(37:49):
seriously as part of thisconversation that disabled
people and disabled communitiesare communities that have been
living with conditions that areimperfect, with bodies that no
longer work the way that wemight want them to, with minds
that no no longer may work theway that we they once did right
(38:12):
and taking these conditions andmaking thriving lives out of
them, and that is ultimatelywhat this book kind of wants us
to think about for our more thanhuman world of what, what kinds
of care and forms of of accesscan we think about and create
(38:35):
for Our increasingly disabledenvironments? Yeah,
because you make, obviously,many important points but what
is interesting is, of course,you're able to focus on this
particular story of contaminatedgroundwater, you know, which is
(38:58):
part of your personal story andthe community that you you
returned to in order toinvestigate what had happened
there, and that discovery ofbasically contamination from
military aircraft, as far as asfar as I understand it. But yet,
(39:19):
despite the catastrophes thatcreated, your resounding
emphasis, if you like, is thatthose same people were still
talking about alternative modesof connection, solidarity and
resistance. It wasn't only aboutdebilitating injuries. Yeah,
(39:44):
yeah, you know. So I was myfamily moved away when I was
very young, so I didn't grow upintimately knowing what happened
in Tucson after we left. So Iwas born in Tucson, Arizona and
basically from the 40sthrough the 70s, late 40s
(40:05):
through the 70s, various weaponsmanufacturers, aircraft
manufacturers, particularlyHughes Aircraft, which then
became Raytheon, which is RTX,now an extremely powerful
weapons manufacturer. What youessentially just started dumping
their, their their waste, theirtheir chemical, their pollution,
(40:28):
on on the ground, in in inabandoned wells, along fences,
in ditches, and of course, thiscontamination seeped into the to
the ground, eventually to thegroundwater. The aquifer then
was moved with the groundwaterand was taken up by city wells
(40:48):
and community wells, and wherepeople drank it and and people
became sick. And so I tell thisstory of not only the pollution,
but then this amazingenvironmental justice movement
that was born in response tothis pollution in when it came
(41:12):
to light in the 1980s by thetime it came to light, the
community was largely a MexicanAmerican community, and city
officials and and theresponsible parties,
essentially, you know, were, youknow, blamed, blamed the
community and these very racistableist accusations that they
were only sick because of theirlifestyle or their diet.
(41:36):
So they pushed the blame back.
They pushed the blame back rightthen. And you know the cruel
thing? I mean, there's so manycruel things about that, but one
is that when it comes to illnessand disability, we're already so
prone to blame, to blameourselves, be like, What did I
do wrong? Right? And so itplayed off of that, that shame,
(41:58):
but the community just foughtback instantly, and within three
months of the contamination kindof coming to light, had formed
this group, Tucsonans for aClean Environment, with amazing
community organizers, MelindaBernal, Eduardo Quintana and
(42:20):
various others Rick Gonzalez andthey, they, they, they created
this really amazing earlyenvironmental justice movement
that when I moved back, I was soamazed and surprised to learn
about. And so the book followsthis history is really grounded
(42:41):
in this history, whilesimultaneously asking these
bigger questions that we'retalking about, right, of you
know, essentially, what does itmean to live with injury, and
how can we, how can we kind ofsee injury to ourselves as
(43:01):
absolutely inseparable frominjury to the environment,
right? Because it really is. Youknow, injury to nature is injury
to us. And so instead of kind ofseeing these as separate realms,
right, which is mostly, at leastin the States, how our
bureaucracies and legislativesystems are set up right
(43:22):
there's, there's health overhere, human health over here,
and then there's like,remediation and environmental
regulation and in a separatearena, but actually, how
incredibly inseparable theyreally are to the people who are
living through an experience of,you know, pollution or an
(43:43):
experience of a forest fire orwhatever it is.
And also that I think you help,you know, there's a clear case
that I think you you help peopleto increasingly recognize that
disability is something that isoften acquired. And that's not
(44:03):
that's not just, you know,through accidents, injuries
aging, but there can be allsorts of various episodes in any
of our lives that could lead todisability. And it seems crazy,
doesn't it, to not already bethinking about how the world
(44:24):
should already be more inclusivebecause it's a natural and
inevitable part of the humanexistence.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is,you know, an integral part of
being alive, right? Right isliving in bodies that are
vulnerable. And you know this,you know, far from, you know, I
(44:49):
do not want a eugenics futurethat is wishing everybody you
know, that is hoping that we canjust live in a world with, you
know, no no disabilities or noillnesses, or something you
know that, in fact, this book isreally actively fighting sort of
the eugenic impulse with, youknow, as as we're kind of
(45:12):
dealing with these environmentalcatastrophes. Because, if we
think about it right, one of theevolutionary sort of conditions
of being alive is, is theability to repair right, and
that ability to repair is onlythere because of the ability to
(45:35):
become harmed. And so, ratherthan seeing all, rather than
seeing injury as this sort ofthing that needs to be expelled,
that needs to be, you know,terminated and and and and and
(45:55):
and gotten rid of to actually,what would it what, what would
happen if we thought, if wetook, if we took our
vulnerability as a place ofgenerative world making and
thought, Okay, what do, whatwhat do, what kinds of care?
What do we need as vulnerablepeople, you know, people who
(46:16):
will, throughout our wholelives, go in and out of
disability. Disability isn'tjust something that's relegated
to people in wheelchairs,disability is something that
impacts us all at differentstages of our lives, and at the
same time, though, I'm verycareful, as much as I'm as much
(46:37):
as I'm really celebrating thesort of alternative politics and
values that emerge fromrecognizing sites of
vulnerability and care, youknow, things like
interdependence, right,creativity, mutual support, all
these kinds of values andpolitics that emerge from the
(46:58):
experience of vulnerability anddisability at the same time, you
know, as you were, also pointingto so much disablement occurs
because of systems of violenceand exploitation in our world,
whether we are talking about war
(47:21):
or whether we are talking aboutabout
histories of colonialism and thedisablement that has has emerged
from that, whether we're talkingabout the exploitation of bodies
and it through, through labor,you know, labor practices,
whatever it is, with systemicracism, right? We know that so
(47:45):
much disablement and injuryhappens because of these systems
of violence and exploitation andso. So the book is also a dance
between those two things, of atone on one level, saying you
know that one of the firstthings is to be constantly in
struggle against these systemsof exploitation that are that
(48:09):
are exploiting our capacity tobe vulnerable. Yeah,
yeah. And it's very interestingtouching on the example of war,
of course, you know, we aresadly, always in a state of war
somewhere in the world. Youknow, obviously the horrors of
(48:29):
the Gaza Strip, the horrors ofwhat's happening in Ukraine.
It's never far away. And I wasreally interested in how you
were able to frame that as massdisablement, and how we respond
to such chronically anddevastatingly injured and
(48:52):
disabled environments.
I mean, it's so tragic to me.This is a, this is a, a 40 year
old, superfund site that I'mtelling the story of, right? And
yet I, you know, I was able tofollow the the weapons
manufacturers that created thebulk of the pollution are still
(49:15):
creating mass disablement andinjury. You know, I was able to
follow the missiles to to Yemenand at the end the conclusion of
the book. And, of course, manyof the the weapons and and and
(49:35):
aircraft and stuff that are thatare being used against innocent
civilians in Gaza are also, arecreated at that same Tucson
site, right? So these, these andand contaminating their water,
right, their groundwater. So,you know, part this, this book
(49:57):
is also, you know, and. A real Iguess what I'm saying is that,
you know, weapons manufacturersare dealing our dealers of death
and disablement. That is whatthey do, right? And so whether
we're looking at thecontamination that happens
locally or that or or what'shappening when you actually
(50:20):
follow the trails of weapons.Yeah,
it's the same anti injusticeposition, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I
was really interested in howthinking about your obviously
work, and interest in both thearts, working as an artist as
(50:45):
well as an academic. How youalso thought about disablement,
perhaps in terms of the arts,because here in the UK, we have
had systematic anddisproportionate cuts, which was
for 14 years with the previousgovernment, and they are
devastating because the arts arevirtually unavailable in state
(51:08):
schools. For example, entire artschools were cut and closed down
at universities. And then, ofcourse, all of those art spaces
socially can't, can't function.It's a huge deprivation. And I
wondered whether you know, it'salmost like another ecosystem,
isn't it? Because that also isrelevant, relevant to health,
(51:32):
our mental health, our societalhealth, our democratic health. I
saw that very much from lookingat your work as another
disablement.
Oh, absolutely, you know. Andhere, I mean those, those cuts
and just attacks on, oneducation are, are so, you know,
(51:56):
intense right now too, you know,I would definitely say attacks
on, on on arts programming andsuch, but also on critical race
theory, on, you know, there'sall these book bans. There's
certainly the silencing ofacademics and educators and
(52:23):
students who are talking aboutwhat is happening in in Gaza.
So, right? So there's all thesedifferent ways I think that that
we can understand environment,understand ecosystems,
understand understand you knowthis, the way that that, that it,
(52:51):
our, our, our socialenvironments are kind of built
environments are also shaped andand limited and and, and at
times as well, too. So I think,I think this connection that
you're making is is really true.And I think the other thing that
I was just going to add, again,you know, with this theme of
curiosity that we've beentalking about, and that your
(53:12):
show, show holds like I see, Isee these attacks, whether we're
talking about attacks on, on,you know, academic, you know, of
like critical race theory, orwhether we're talking about
attacks on art, artsprogramming, right it. There
they are. You know, on, to someextent, attacks on curiosity, of
(53:36):
just keeping, of trying to limitwhat is available to think
about, to explore, and andthat's that's horrible that is,
and it's very dangerous. And itfor the the UK, I remember,
actually for especially when Iwas more actively doing a lot
(54:01):
of, you know, shows andexhibitions and stuff like that,
just being so blown away by thedisability arts community in the
UK. And so I hope that, and Iknow that they have, but people
have found a way to create andthrive and be curious despite
all that. But yeah,
(54:22):
yeah, yeah, I completely agreewith you. I feel that those
qualities of curiosity andcourage are being disabled, and
in many ways, deliberatelydisabled, and so then you could
start entering a whole newconversation about the
disablement of democracy. Whatare the purposes of disabling
these qualities, for example,
(54:43):
yeah, and the word disability isso interesting, because, to me,
you know, I think we can use itin different ways. Because, to
me, disability is also, it'salso a generative force, right?
Disability is also a place of,of, you know, creativity, again,
of. Sort of these alternativevalues and meaning making. So
(55:05):
I'm also, I'm careful to to usedisability and disablement too
much as a as a negativemetaphor, because it also, I
think disabled communities haveworked so hard to also,
just show the incredible sort of
(55:27):
creativity and alternative waysof living that that disability
offers. So I think,
yeah, I just wanted to say thattoo.
Yeah, absolutely. So what Ialways ask guests is the series
question, Can art save us?Because, of course, it's a broad
(55:49):
question, and I'd be veryinterested in how you might
respond to that idea, can artsave us?
I love this question. I wouldsay that art is an absolutely
integral part of whatever it isthat will save us, right? That
art, that to me, art, making andcreativity, are things that can
(56:13):
be present in so many differentrealms and aspects of my life.
And it's but that it is thatsort of creativity and curiosity
that I associate with with art,right, that that space of of
exploration that is so soimportant and so vital, and I
(56:39):
think is, is is an absolutelycentral ingredient to all the
different forces that we aregoing to be needing to to save
us, to save our our ecosystems,our animal the animal world that
(57:00):
We, we are a part of and livewith, because, I think also art
making and and specifically,again, thinking about like
curiosity and creativity, forme, are also so closely related
to empathy, right, that curiosity is where, where
(57:20):
empathy can emerge from. Ifyou're curious about another
being, then it's easier to haveempathy. And that seems like a
really, yeah, just we need moreempathy. And so I think that
that that creativity andcuriosity is part of that to me.
(57:40):
So, so yes, I have, I have faiththat art, that art will save us,
and that it is one of the great,beautiful things about our
species, as our capacity for
creativity. Well, that's such abeautiful answer. So thank you
very much. And, and amazingly,that is the hour flown by. I
(58:03):
always find it goes so veryquickly. So I would really like
to thank you for your generoustime. And I'd also like to
highlight that this episode ispublished on International Peace
Day, which is the 21st ofSeptember. And I was really
pleased to talk to Sunaura,because she has an important
(58:25):
voice that's challengingenvironmental violence and
injustice, the mass ecologicaldisablement of all of us, and
it's an important message tohear, particularly on
International Peace Day. Sothank you again, Sunaura, for all
of your generous time, and thankyou to the listeners, please
share this free to listen serieswherever you can and help make
(58:47):
the arts all of ours. Thank you,Sunaura, very, very much.
Thank you so much Paula,
this was really fun. Iappreciate your wonderful
questions. Bless you.
Welcome to thispodcast series asking the
question, Can art save us? I'mstarting the first national and
international conversation aboutcourage and curiosity. What do
these qualities really mean, andwhy does it make a big
difference to our mental,societal and democratic health?
I talk to award winning anddiverse artists across the arts
(00:24):
to explore these qualities intheir lives and work both to
inspire and for us all to learn.I'm exploring why we need these
qualities to help change theglobal epidemic of mental
illness, loneliness,polarization of our communities
and even global conflict. If thearts cultivate courage and
curiosity, I'm asking thequestion, Can art save us? My
(00:50):
guest today is an artist,writer, activist, academic and
Mother Sunaura Taylor is theAssistant Professor in the
Division of Society andEnvironment and the Director of
the Disabled Ecologies lab atthe University of California
Berkeley. A skilled artist herartworks have been exhibited at
venues such as the CUE ArtFoundation, a contemporary art
(01:13):
space in New York City, theSmithsonian Institution, the
world's largest museum,education and research complex,
and they are part of theBerkeley Art Museum collection.
Sunaura is also the author ofBeasts of Burden, Animal and
Disability Liberation, whichreceived the American Book
Award. Her current book isDisabled Ecologies, Lessons from
(01:36):
a Wounded Desert. And whilstit's not a memoir, it is
personal and political, shedocuments how residents organize
one of the earliest and mostsuccessful environmental justice
movements in the USA. In thiswork, Sunaura is a game changer,
a global thinker, she bringstogether what environmental and
(01:57):
disability movements can learnfrom one another. Her books
reveal how disability andableism shape our understanding
of nature and environmentalcrisis. She uncovers networks of
disability, both human and wild,that are created when ecosystems
are corrupted and profoundlyaltered. Sunaura raises an
(02:19):
important question we should allbe asking, in the name of shared
justice, what happened to us,not what happened to you? This
is someone with an incredibleeye for detail, for whom
painting is a love of seeing,and whose political statements
are also drawn from sharpobservation, analysis and lived
(02:40):
experience, a guest we have muchto learn from. I'm delighted to
have Sunaura Taylor here with ustoday. Hello Sunaura, and
welcome.
Hello Paula. Thank you so muchfor that lovely introduction and
for having me on the show. I'mso excited about to talk to you.
Oh, I'm so pleased. I'm verypleased. And thank you again,
because listeners willappreciate that you have a time
(03:05):
difference with me here in theUK, so thank you again. Yeah,
yeah. Well, it's perfectly goodright now. It's only it's, you
know, early in the day, so we'regood.
To begin with Sunaura, when I wasresearching your, you know, your
life, your career, your work, Iwas really interested to read
about your childhood educationon being what's called
(03:28):
'unschooled'because there was anemphasis on developing natural
curiosity, and curiosity is aquality I'm very interested in.
So I wondered if you could tellus about unschooled and whether
that's a stamp of liberation,which has become a theme in your
life and work, or a guidingforce?
(03:51):
Yeah, yeah. So I love talkingabout my unschooled experience.
So I was very lucky to be raisedby two amazing parents who,
really, you know, had a sort ofsort of radical vision of how
(04:14):
they wanted to create space andspace for curiosity for us kids,
so there's four of us, and we,yeah, we, we, we, we stayed home
and and, and learned at home,but also out in our community,
kind of and, and with a group ofa group of families, unschooling
(04:38):
is essentially the philosophythat that kids innately learn
that they are, you know, andthey are innately curious. And
so if, if we can createenvironments where that
curiosity can flourish, andwhere those kids, where kids
have the means to. Choose whatthey're curious about, that they
(05:03):
will kind of develop a love forlearning, you know. And I think
this sort of education is, youknow, we were so privileged in a
lot of ways. You know, we werefinancially well off enough that
my mom, my mom could stay homewith us and do this. My dad also
(05:24):
was, like, quite involved. So,so whenever I talk about it, I'm
also like, you know, I'm, I wantto kind of preface it with, you
know, there were a lot ofconditions that allowed, allowed
my parents to do this that don'twork for everyone you know, but
for for us, and I thinkspecifically for me, I'm a
(05:46):
disabled person. I was adisabled kid. You know, my
experiences that I did try inpublic school were were hard
because my parents always gaveus the option. You know, part of
it is about about kids, kidsbeing respected as as people
with opinions and and desiresand and and and things that they
(06:10):
want to do, right? And so partof that was also giving us the
option to try school. And youknow, for me, that was
particularly challenging as adisabled kid in Georgia in the
1980s and 90s, you know? So,yeah, so my so, so my parents
created this environment for uswith just incredible amounts of
(06:35):
free time, which now I miss verymuch, and just a lot of
creativity around my My parentsare both extremely creative,
project oriented people. So, youknow, my mom was always painting
or writing, writing books orwriting stories or making,
(06:55):
making theatrical productionsor, you know, and my dad is a
composer and a scientist. So Iso even when they weren't
directly being engaged with us,I was learning from them about
making projects and about beingcurious. Yeah.
So as you were saying, it's theconditions being right. And of
course, you were in a very richenvironment, yes,
(07:19):
yeah. I was in a very richenvironment, and, you know, I
had siblings who were also verycurious. So, so I would say, you
know, that that I'm extremelygrateful for that, that
upbringing, because it reallyallowed for me to discover the
(07:41):
things that I remain to be, thesort of the things that I that I
love. I love writing, I love Ilove drawing and art making. I
love reading. But I also, Ithink what it really gave to me
is a sense of how to commit andself sort of navigate my, my,
(08:08):
my, my curiosities, and kind ofgo with it, go with the flow of
those curiosities, and, and,and, and take them seriously. So
it was a really, it was, it wasreally fun. And of course, there
were drawbacks too, you know,but it was, it was, I think for
me, it was a really helpful wayof of being raised, and
(08:31):
definitely that that thatphilosophy of of being a self
directed learner is even now, assomeone who you know is in I'm
in my 40s, I am academic, youknow, but I still really feels,
feels like those kind of guidingprinciples are kind of how I
(08:54):
continue to do my research.Yeah,
I did imagine that byhaving that opportunity to
cultivate those Freer thinkingskills, it establishes an
independence and also anopenness to investigation. And
of course, that follows throughwith your academic work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.And you know, I one of the one
(09:18):
of the things that I reallyvalue about it is, is just the
way that there, there, therewasn't someone sort of telling
me, like, Oh, this is, you know,this is an interesting idea that
you're thinking about, but youneed to study it in this way. Or
actually, that's not a relevantthing that you should be
thinking about. You should bethinking about these other
(09:39):
things that are more importantto your, you know, to your
education or something, thereweren't, there weren't those
kinds of forces. And so I thinkI, I had a real strong sense of,
like, you know, the the thenerdy, kind of obsessive things
that kids can be kind ofinterested in, then really, can
kind of flourish into. Uh, youknow, the real questions can
(10:04):
emerge from those things, and,and, and, and so I think that
having those be respected andtaken seriously was, was was
pretty, was pretty rare. And Ifeel very, very privileged and
and lucky to have gotten toexperience that. Yeah, it
was fascinating to read aboutthat. And I also read that you
(10:27):
grew up in a household that youdescribe as full of artists and
anti war activists. And that wasalso, yeah, that was also
interesting, because it feltthat that positive influence of
activism in your family wasperhaps another guiding force
that's helped you build your ownresilience, and particularly
(10:51):
when you're challenging ableism,for example, in a world that
creates disability and you'reraising new questions, you're
perhaps, yeah, drawing on thatpositive sense of activism.
Yeah,
I mean, I think on, on a on areally deep level, right, one of
the things that, you know,growing up in, in a in a family
(11:12):
that had an awareness of, youknow, what kind of world they
wanted to live in, what kind ofworld, world and they wanted
their, their kids to grow up in,and just social justice issues
more broadly, but then also incombination with unschooling, is
that I feel like I grew up in anenvironment where questions of
(11:36):
ethics and justice were werereally valued as sort of things
to really spend your timewondering about as, really, you
know, as as, as questions that,again, even if they come through
the the mind of a child youknow, are, you know, why is
(11:56):
there war? Why, for me as adisabled kid, you know, why is,
Why is the world like, why do Ifeel like the world is not built
for me or my my siblings and Ialso all became very interested
in, you know, animal animalrights and animal justice issues
that at young age, at a youngage, and those questions also of
(12:20):
just like, What is, what is,what is cruelty, and what does
it mean to to live with otheranimals, and how do we treat
other animals like those kindsof questions were really taken
we were allowed to take thosequestions seriously as a kid.
And to some extent, I feel likemany of the questions that I am
(12:41):
still asking are questions thatI had as a kid, and I've just
like continued followingfollowing them in different
ways.
Yeah, yeah, that's reallyinteresting, and I understand
that actually picking up onthose questions, it was during
your master's, your fine artdegree, that you started to
think about disability beyondthe human body, and about animal
(13:05):
industries and those mergingrealities. I wondered for
listeners, if you'd like toshare more about that foundation
that was beginning to develop inyour art practice at that time.
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll saythat you know, so I had a sort
of like on, to some extent, Ihad some political awareness of
(13:30):
of of disability from my ownbackground and history that I
can talk about that relates moreto my, my present book of like
my, my disability was caused byby pollution and and it was, you
know, a so I had, I had this, Ihad this understanding that
(13:50):
disability is political in that,in that way that, like I that
disability wasn't an individualmedical problem, but that, you
know, it was a social justiceissue, right that it could be
caused by these systems of harm.But I didn't actually come into,
like, political disabilitycommunity and begin thinking
about ableism and disability andAccess and Disability Rights or
(14:13):
justice until I was quite a bitolder. I always intuitively,
kind of hoped that somethingexisted. But I, you know, again,
I grew up in, you know, acollege town in Georgia, and,
like, you know, pre and thenearly days of the internet, so
it wasn't that easy to find. Andso I didn't discover, you know,
really critical disabilitycommunity until I was in my
(14:37):
early 20s, whereas, for animalanimal activism, you know, I
think from the very beginning,when I realized, when I kind of
had this, you know, epiphany,you know, that people, you know,
essentially exploit, use animalsfor different things, I also
knew that there were people whowere organizing and to who were.
(15:00):
Kind of active in in the thestruggle to kind of think about
animals differently. And so whenI was a MFA student, you know,
in my 20s, I was really justkind of having this incredible
awakening to disabilitycommunity out here in the Bay
(15:20):
Area where I was getting my MFA,which, you know, in this in the
States, many people say, is thehome of the disability rights
movement. There was a lot ofdisability rights history here
and so and at the same time, Iwas painting these massive
paintings of animal of, youknow, animals essentially in
(15:41):
slaughterhouses or factoryfarms. And so those, those two
different things that I, that Iwas caring about very deeply,
that on some level, you know,were separate in my art studio,
they, they started really comingtogether. And I realized through
research for the paintings, justhow much the animals that I was
(16:06):
painting were, well, manydifferent things, but one of
them, on a really materiallevel, is that the animals that
I was painting were allessentially disabled. Animals
are, you know, these, theseindustries are very disabling
industries, right? And animalsare bred in ways that, you know,
create a lot of profitabilityand like, are able to commodify
(16:32):
animals better through, youknow, creating animals that make
more milk or make more meat orwhatever, but then that harms
their bodies in other ways. Andso I realized that I was
essentially, you know, paintingdisabled animals. And that
really got me thinking aboutwhat other kinds of
relationships there might bebetween sort of ableism and
(16:54):
speciesism. And I startedresearching it a lot. And, you
know, ultimately wrote,ultimately wrote a whole book
about it. But I think that thatthat actually is kind of a good
example of how my practice attimes has has developed, which
is that at you know, at some atthe beginning stages, they are
(17:17):
often just drawings andpaintings where different kind
of seemingly disparate ideas arekind of coming together. And
then I take those ideas veryseriously and research them and
explore them, and think aboutlike, why, why are these coming
together? And what do they haveto to say to each other? And
then that ultimately kind ofinforms my my academic research
(17:39):
too. Yeah,
yeah. So the art practice andyour academic work are both
sharing that exploration, if youlike, in terms of
interconnections between theoppression of animals the
oppression of disabled people,whether that's visually through
your artwork or, of course,through your thinking and
(17:59):
academic research. Yes, yeah,yeah. So it'd be interesting to
talk about both of the booksactually mentioned in the
introduction, and perhaps if wetouch on Beasts of Burden prior
to your current book, just tofollow on from what you were
just saying. That was veryinteresting in terms of how you
(18:23):
could focus exactly on what youwere just saying, how factory
farmed animals are forciblydisabled through confinement.
There's visible barriers forthat confinement, for example,
is this how you began to equate,if you like the idea of
barriers, we talk aboutstructural barriers in our in
(18:44):
our in society, in our lives,that may be invisible or less
visible, but nevertheless theyare barriers. They're denying
inclusion, and they're denyingrights. So there
are kind of many very variousdifferent trails that I'm kind
of following that book, or ideasthat I'm thinking about.
(19:04):
I mean, certainly kind of
the barriers, both, you know,actual very physical barriers,
of cages or lack of access, arewhat I'm thinking about in that
book. But I'm also thinking ofthe sort of ideological barriers
right of of barriers that keeppeople, keep systems, keep
(19:32):
systems of power fromconsidering those that are lay,
lie outside of the norms, right?Of those that are are sort of
historically have been included,okay, well, maybe one of the
ways that I can talk about it isthat, so, you know, there's
(19:53):
these various capacities thathave long been sort of held up
in western so. Science in inphilosophy, as the capacities
that essentially make one abeing with rights, make one a
person, make one, you know, abeing that one should have moral
(20:15):
regard towards. And thosecapacities have to do with
rationality, with differentideas about language, with ideas
of who has a sense of self,these various capacities that,
like philosophers and scientistshave long debated, that have
been used essentially, if welook historically, to keep
(20:39):
different groups out of this,the the realm of, you know, the
the individual, the rightsbearing individual, which, of
course, historically, has been,you know, a white, able, able
bodied, educated, propertyowning able bodied man, right?
(21:04):
And so those so we can look atthese different capacities and
the way in which they have beenheld up to exclude all sorts of
different populations of andcommunities of human beings in
different times and places, ofcourse, and also the way in
which those capacities have beenheld up to exclude from
(21:27):
consideration and moral concernother other species, right? That
other being that there's oftenthese arguments of, oh, well,
animals don't have this or thatcapacity so it's it's not
morally wrong to to harm them.And of course, these capacities
are capacities that are alsoableist capacities, because they
(21:51):
are capacities that that somedisabled people do not always
have right. And so I'm lookingat that. Part of what this book
does is that I'm looking at thathistory of the way why these
certain kinds of capacities havebeen so
(22:12):
valued, and the purpose of them
is often, of course, to thenexclude or justify other forms
of exclusion. And sospecifically, in this book, I'm
looking at how these, how thissort of idealization of these,
of these capacities, then harmsboth disabled people and non
(22:34):
human animals. And I alwaysreally try to make really clear
that this book is I, in no way,am I, you know, I'm really
careful that the book is not acomparison. It's not saying
disabled people are like animalsor animals are like disabled
people, but rather that thesystems of oppression that have
(22:55):
sort of hold up these kinds ofspeciesist and ableist ideas of
what gives one value areconnected, if that makes sense.
So that's, that's one of thethings that it does, but it's
also, and then I'll stoprambling, but the book also, you
know, disability communities andanimal and animal rights
(23:17):
communities have actuallyhistorically been really pitted
against each other for a wholevariety of reasons, and so part
of what the book is also doingis exploring why that is, and
then trying to make this othercase that actually they have a
whole lot to offer each other.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Sothere's a very clear
(23:39):
distinction, isn't there. It'snot about being confined to a
disabled body like an animal ina cage, as you, as you
mentioned, it's very much aboutlooking at what the oppressive
systems are, or value systemsare that are creating those
confinements or thosedisabilities. And you and you've
(24:00):
been looking at those, thoseinterconnections, yes,
I
love that way of framing it.Thank you. Yes, okay,
just, just checking that I amdoing you justice in terms of my
own understanding.
Yeah, yeah, no. I
think that's a wonderful way,way of framing it. You
know that this is, thisis not a sort of like, Oh, the
(24:21):
poor, suffering disabled peopleare similar to the suffering
animals. Like, not at all. Thatis not what I'm talking about.
But yes, looking at thesesystems of exploitation and
systems of oppression and andhow, you know, the the different
ways in which they there, theyhave impacted different
(24:41):
communities, human and nonhuman.
Yeah, and I was interested,actually, in terms of some of
your paintings, some of yourartwork, where you have been
depicting animals, you've alsoincluded your self portraits and
with other animals. I waswondering whether this was
(25:03):
before Beasts of Burden, thesame time or following, because
I was interested in whatdifferent types of reactions you
may have had from what peoplecould experience visually from
your artwork, or in comparisonto reading that particular book,
Beasts of Burden, absolutely.
(25:25):
Yeah.
So the artworks, it reallydepends. Some of them were kind
of emerging in the you know,before, before Beast of
Burden, actually, before Ireally started writing it. And
then some of them, kind of like,were created alongside of so,
(25:46):
kind of, to speak to what I whatmentioned earlier, that really
is sort of part of my practice,even as I'm writing to like,
continue to essentially like,let the ideas be playful with
each other too, right? And to,you know, I'm even, if I'm doing
very sort of rigorous, you know,quote, unquote rigorous
(26:06):
historical research, or archivalresearch, or whatever it is, to
also have that sort of art, thecreative practice, where I don't
have to kind of censor myself interms of, like, what, what is
sensible, or what is rational,or what, what is worthy of
(26:27):
research, but actually to justsort of explore the ideas as
they come together. And so thesethe the artworks, you know,
there's, there's a lot ofdifferent bodies of work that I
could talk about, but I do, it'strue, I often have this
caricature of myself that Ibring into these pictures of of
(26:49):
of other, of other animals. Soyou know myself in chicken cages
or marching with chickens, or inthe Arctic with, with, with,
with, with, with ox or with,with, with polar bears, or my
body kind of echoing the shapeof a manatees body, body. So
(27:12):
there's a lot of different waysin which my sort of caricature
kind of continuously emerges.You know, I there one of the
things about dealing with, aboutexploring a topic that is so
delicate, right? Is that Iunderstood, you know, really
(27:33):
early on, when I was writingthis book, that these are topics
that can be, be really, thathave such harmful histories,
right? The history ofanimalization and dehumanization
of non white peoples, ofdisabled peoples, you know,
these are of women, right? Theseare, these can be really brutal
(28:00):
histories, and and and and thathave that aren't only
historical, right, that stillhave, that that still really
have power. And so I'm, I wasvery careful to to try,
throughout writing visa burdenand in my artworks, to be
(28:22):
attentive to the kind of ways inwhich animals, animals have been
weaponized as insults, right?And so I think for me, part of
part of doing exploring that wasthat I was like, Well, I you
(28:44):
know, I need to, if I'm going tobe talking about these issues,
then, like I need to bevulnerable in bringing in and
basically bringing myself intoit, and exploring my own
relationship to animality, whichI know is, you know, a very
specific a relationship. Youknow, I'm, I'm a white woman. I
(29:09):
don't have particular languagebarriers, right? I don't have
intellectual disability. There'sall these ways in which my
relationship to animality. Andthinking about my relationship
to animals is also informed bymy privilege as as as it is also
(29:30):
informed by the sort ofconnections that I feel be as a
disabled person, that I don'tuse my arms, I use my mouth for
most things. And so some of myartwork has also been just about
the way that the mouth has, the mouth is animalized, right
and or not, you know, not beingable to walk upright, not being
(29:54):
able to use my opposable thumbsin the way that a human being,
you know, is. Is, is, istypically sort of imagined as,
as being able to and those,those kinds of actual, very
physical connections I explorein my work, both as and most
(30:16):
often like as actual placeswhere, where I have felt, not
not shame, but actuallyconnection, right, when I have a
part in Beasts of Burden, where Italk about my, my beloved dog
who's no longer with us, but howhe used to make his his bed by,
you know, grabbing the blanketin his mouth and kind of
(30:38):
adjusting it, making a nest,and, and how much sort of, yeah,
just connection that I felt tohim as another creature using
his mouth for things. So yeah,so I explored in a lot of
different ways, but those aresome of some of the some of the
different kinds of things
that I'm thinking about. Yeah,
it's incredibly interesting,especially replacing shame with
(31:02):
connection, which you know issuch a valuable way of thinking
about difference. And you alsomentioned vulnerability, because
I think it's very courageous forany artist to even use
themselves as a subject, even ifit's as a self portrait or to
draw attention to something intheir artwork, that's also a
(31:27):
courageous act, as is activism.It often requires courage, and I
was also interested in terms ofpaintings when I was actually
looking at your win Newhouseawards submissions earlier on in
your career. And there were anumber of impressive oil
(31:48):
paintings, I think, of friendspeople you know, the attention
to detail really leaps out. Andyou were talking about how your
mouth taught you to see, and howyour wheelchair taught you to
watch. Yeah, well, you did,
you did some good research,because I don't even remember
(32:09):
what was in those submissions.
It was a lovely, lovely read. it was, it was really
interesting. I'll quote you as areminder. "I see so many things
most people don't get theopportunity to really see." You
were talking about how youlearned to see detail, "to pay
(32:33):
attention to my visual world,to, in effect, fall in love with
the act of seeing. That's whatmy mouth taught me."
Yeah, okay, now it's coming backto me.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I
mean, I, you know, I
(32:53):
don't use my hands, so I paint,yeah, I paint with a brush in my
mouth, or, you know, or a pen,and so my eyes are, you know,
very, very close to the page.Now that I'm in my 40s, I have
to say the blurry vision issetting in So,
(33:15):
but
yeah, you know, and actually Iwrite in my newer book about
just the way in which, sort ofseeing, for me as someone who
also doesn't, you know, touch isnot my first I don't have a
desire, like, I don't have thissort of, like a desire to touch
(33:35):
things necessarily, right? Likefor me, seeing, really is a form
of touch and and I write aboutthat in my new book, in in terms
of also, just like theenvironmental imagination, like
what that kind of way ofobserving can't has, has taught
(33:55):
me about a sort of my, mydisabled relationship to to the
environment. So, so while I'mnot painting quite as quite as
much as I used to, you know, Ithink that the I've kind of
that, the way in which seeinginforms my work
has has remained
(34:17):
really, really important. And,you know, I think to go to go
back to your first questionabout unschooling, right? You
know, I was a nerdy kid wholoved old, you know, dead
painters. I spent a lot of time,you know, just pouring over pre
(34:41):
raphaelite art and Goya and, youknow, just all the Rembrandt. I
mean, just really, just hours.Learning from
the masters of oil painting.
Yeah, learning from oilpaintings, you know,
essentially, and and that isreally what I loved for a
(35:05):
really, really, really longtime. And so I spent a, you
know, a lot of my, a lot of myyoung adult life, just, you
know, immersing myself in that,in that reality, but then very
much aware of how my specificembodiment was also informing my
(35:26):
what you know aspects of or howI wanted to paint and off of
what I wanted to paint.
Yeah, yeah. And so, havingmentioned your current book,
I'll just for the listenersstate the title again, Disabled
Ecologies Lessons from a WoundedDesert is the current book, and
(35:51):
this obviously has relevance toall of your prior work, but I
felt that this was considered avery clear call to action, and
it was very much understandingthis time, our collective time
now, as the age of disability,and the importance of learning
(36:14):
from the disability movementthat actually survival isn't
simply about the survival of thefittest.
Yeah, no, it, I think thatthat's, that's a, an important
read on it, that this, that youknow, my, my hope with this
(36:39):
project is that it can give us alanguage to talk, to talk about
what is increasingly happeningto our beautiful world, right
that, but you know, there we areconstantly bombarded with news
of fires, of floods, of youknow, of rising sea levels and
(37:03):
the injuries that that occurfrom that right, not only to
human beings, but to our youknow, our ecosystems are the the
animals that we live with. Andso I this book is really trying
(37:23):
to to give us a language to tograpple with this sort of multi
species disablement that is allaround us with the climate and
extinction catastrophes that weare all living with and
yes, a call to action to bringdisability to take disability
(37:49):
seriously as part of thisconversation that disabled
people and disabled communitiesare communities that have been
living with conditions that areimperfect, with bodies that no
longer work the way that wemight want them to, with minds
that no no longer may work theway that we they once did right
(38:12):
and taking these conditions andmaking thriving lives out of
them, and that is ultimatelywhat this book kind of wants us
to think about for our more thanhuman world of what, what kinds
of care and forms of of accesscan we think about and create
(38:35):
for Our increasingly disabledenvironments? Yeah,
because you make, obviously,many important points but what
is interesting is, of course,you're able to focus on this
particular story of contaminatedgroundwater, you know, which is
(38:58):
part of your personal story andthe community that you you
returned to in order toinvestigate what had happened
there, and that discovery ofbasically contamination from
military aircraft, as far as asfar as I understand it. But yet,
(39:19):
despite the catastrophes thatcreated, your resounding
emphasis, if you like, is thatthose same people were still
talking about alternative modesof connection, solidarity and
resistance. It wasn't only aboutdebilitating injuries. Yeah,
(39:44):
yeah, you know. So I was myfamily moved away when I was
very young, so I didn't grow upintimately knowing what happened
in Tucson after we left. So Iwas born in Tucson, Arizona and
basically from the 40sthrough the 70s, late 40s
(40:05):
through the 70s, various weaponsmanufacturers, aircraft
manufacturers, particularlyHughes Aircraft, which then
became Raytheon, which is RTX,now an extremely powerful
weapons manufacturer. What youessentially just started dumping
their, their their waste, theirtheir chemical, their pollution,
(40:28):
on on the ground, in in inabandoned wells, along fences,
in ditches, and of course, thiscontamination seeped into the to
the ground, eventually to thegroundwater. The aquifer then
was moved with the groundwaterand was taken up by city wells
(40:48):
and community wells, and wherepeople drank it and and people
became sick. And so I tell thisstory of not only the pollution,
but then this amazingenvironmental justice movement
that was born in response tothis pollution in when it came
(41:12):
to light in the 1980s by thetime it came to light, the
community was largely a MexicanAmerican community, and city
officials and and theresponsible parties,
essentially, you know, were, youknow, blamed, blamed the
community and these very racistableist accusations that they
were only sick because of theirlifestyle or their diet.
(41:36):
So they pushed the blame back.
They pushed the blame back rightthen. And you know the cruel
thing? I mean, there's so manycruel things about that, but one
is that when it comes to illnessand disability, we're already so
prone to blame, to blameourselves, be like, What did I
do wrong? Right? And so itplayed off of that, that shame,
(41:58):
but the community just foughtback instantly, and within three
months of the contamination kindof coming to light, had formed
this group, Tucsonans for aClean Environment, with amazing
community organizers, MelindaBernal, Eduardo Quintana and
(42:20):
various others Rick Gonzalez andthey, they, they, they created
this really amazing earlyenvironmental justice movement
that when I moved back, I was soamazed and surprised to learn
about. And so the book followsthis history is really grounded
(42:41):
in this history, whilesimultaneously asking these
bigger questions that we'retalking about, right, of you
know, essentially, what does itmean to live with injury, and
how can we, how can we kind ofsee injury to ourselves as
(43:01):
absolutely inseparable frominjury to the environment,
right? Because it really is. Youknow, injury to nature is injury
to us. And so instead of kind ofseeing these as separate realms,
right, which is mostly, at leastin the States, how our
bureaucracies and legislativesystems are set up right
(43:22):
there's, there's health overhere, human health over here,
and then there's like,remediation and environmental
regulation and in a separatearena, but actually, how
incredibly inseparable theyreally are to the people who are
living through an experience of,you know, pollution or an
(43:43):
experience of a forest fire orwhatever it is.
And also that I think you help,you know, there's a clear case
that I think you you help peopleto increasingly recognize that
disability is something that isoften acquired. And that's not
(44:03):
that's not just, you know,through accidents, injuries
aging, but there can be allsorts of various episodes in any
of our lives that could lead todisability. And it seems crazy,
doesn't it, to not already bethinking about how the world
(44:24):
should already be more inclusivebecause it's a natural and
inevitable part of the humanexistence.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is,you know, an integral part of
being alive, right? Right isliving in bodies that are
vulnerable. And you know this,you know, far from, you know, I
(44:49):
do not want a eugenics futurethat is wishing everybody you
know, that is hoping that we canjust live in a world with, you
know, no no disabilities or noillnesses, or something you
know that, in fact, this book isreally actively fighting sort of
the eugenic impulse with, youknow, as as we're kind of
(45:12):
dealing with these environmentalcatastrophes. Because, if we
think about it right, one of theevolutionary sort of conditions
of being alive is, is theability to repair right, and
that ability to repair is onlythere because of the ability to
(45:35):
become harmed. And so, ratherthan seeing all, rather than
seeing injury as this sort ofthing that needs to be expelled,
that needs to be, you know,terminated and and and and and
(45:55):
and gotten rid of to actually,what would it what, what would
happen if we thought, if wetook, if we took our
vulnerability as a place ofgenerative world making and
thought, Okay, what do, whatwhat do, what kinds of care?
What do we need as vulnerablepeople, you know, people who
(46:16):
will, throughout our wholelives, go in and out of
disability. Disability isn'tjust something that's relegated
to people in wheelchairs,disability is something that
impacts us all at differentstages of our lives, and at the
same time, though, I'm verycareful, as much as I'm as much
(46:37):
as I'm really celebrating thesort of alternative politics and
values that emerge fromrecognizing sites of
vulnerability and care, youknow, things like
interdependence, right,creativity, mutual support, all
these kinds of values andpolitics that emerge from the
(46:58):
experience of vulnerability anddisability at the same time, you
know, as you were, also pointingto so much disablement occurs
because of systems of violenceand exploitation in our world,
whether we are talking about war
(47:21):
or whether we are talking aboutabout
histories of colonialism and thedisablement that has has emerged
from that, whether we're talkingabout the exploitation of bodies
and it through, through labor,you know, labor practices,
whatever it is, with systemicracism, right? We know that so
(47:45):
much disablement and injuryhappens because of these systems
of violence and exploitation andso. So the book is also a dance
between those two things, of atone on one level, saying you
know that one of the firstthings is to be constantly in
struggle against these systemsof exploitation that are that
(48:09):
are exploiting our capacity tobe vulnerable. Yeah,
yeah. And it's very interestingtouching on the example of war,
of course, you know, we aresadly, always in a state of war
somewhere in the world. Youknow, obviously the horrors of
(48:29):
the Gaza Strip, the horrors ofwhat's happening in Ukraine.
It's never far away. And I wasreally interested in how you
were able to frame that as massdisablement, and how we respond
to such chronically anddevastatingly injured and
(48:52):
disabled environments.
I mean, it's so tragic to me.This is a, this is a, a 40 year
old, superfund site that I'mtelling the story of, right? And
yet I, you know, I was able tofollow the the weapons
manufacturers that created thebulk of the pollution are still
(49:15):
creating mass disablement andinjury. You know, I was able to
follow the missiles to to Yemenand at the end the conclusion of
the book. And, of course, manyof the the weapons and and and
(49:35):
aircraft and stuff that are thatare being used against innocent
civilians in Gaza are also, arecreated at that same Tucson
site, right? So these, these andand contaminating their water,
right, their groundwater. So,you know, part this, this book
(49:57):
is also, you know, and. A real Iguess what I'm saying is that,
you know, weapons manufacturersare dealing our dealers of death
and disablement. That is whatthey do, right? And so whether
we're looking at thecontamination that happens
locally or that or or what'shappening when you actually
(50:20):
follow the trails of weapons.Yeah,
it's the same anti injusticeposition, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I
was really interested in howthinking about your obviously
work, and interest in both thearts, working as an artist as
(50:45):
well as an academic. How youalso thought about disablement,
perhaps in terms of the arts,because here in the UK, we have
had systematic anddisproportionate cuts, which was
for 14 years with the previousgovernment, and they are
devastating because the arts arevirtually unavailable in state
(51:08):
schools. For example, entire artschools were cut and closed down
at universities. And then, ofcourse, all of those art spaces
socially can't, can't function.It's a huge deprivation. And I
wondered whether you know, it'salmost like another ecosystem,
isn't it? Because that also isrelevant, relevant to health,
(51:32):
our mental health, our societalhealth, our democratic health. I
saw that very much from lookingat your work as another
disablement.
Oh, absolutely, you know. Andhere, I mean those, those cuts
and just attacks on, oneducation are, are so, you know,
(51:56):
intense right now too, you know,I would definitely say attacks
on, on on arts programming andsuch, but also on critical race
theory, on, you know, there'sall these book bans. There's
certainly the silencing ofacademics and educators and
(52:23):
students who are talking aboutwhat is happening in in Gaza.
So, right? So there's all thesedifferent ways I think that that
we can understand environment,understand ecosystems,
understand understand you knowthis, the way that that, that it,
(52:51):
our, our, our socialenvironments are kind of built
environments are also shaped andand limited and and, and at
times as well, too. So I think,I think this connection that
you're making is is really true.And I think the other thing that
I was just going to add, again,you know, with this theme of
curiosity that we've beentalking about, and that your
(53:12):
show, show holds like I see, Isee these attacks, whether we're
talking about attacks on, on,you know, academic, you know, of
like critical race theory, orwhether we're talking about
attacks on art, artsprogramming, right it. There
they are. You know, on, to someextent, attacks on curiosity, of
(53:36):
just keeping, of trying to limitwhat is available to think
about, to explore, and andthat's that's horrible that is,
and it's very dangerous. And itfor the the UK, I remember,
actually for especially when Iwas more actively doing a lot
(54:01):
of, you know, shows andexhibitions and stuff like that,
just being so blown away by thedisability arts community in the
UK. And so I hope that, and Iknow that they have, but people
have found a way to create andthrive and be curious despite
all that. But yeah,
(54:22):
yeah, yeah, I completely agreewith you. I feel that those
qualities of curiosity andcourage are being disabled, and
in many ways, deliberatelydisabled, and so then you could
start entering a whole newconversation about the
disablement of democracy. Whatare the purposes of disabling
these qualities, for example,
(54:43):
yeah, and the word disability isso interesting, because, to me,
you know, I think we can use itin different ways. Because, to
me, disability is also, it'salso a generative force, right?
Disability is also a place of,of, you know, creativity, again,
of. Sort of these alternativevalues and meaning making. So
(55:05):
I'm also, I'm careful to to usedisability and disablement too
much as a as a negativemetaphor, because it also, I
think disabled communities haveworked so hard to also,
just show the incredible sort of
(55:27):
creativity and alternative waysof living that that disability
offers. So I think,
yeah, I just wanted to say thattoo.
Yeah, absolutely. So what Ialways ask guests is the series
question, Can art save us?Because, of course, it's a broad
(55:49):
question, and I'd be veryinterested in how you might
respond to that idea, can artsave us?
I love this question. I wouldsay that art is an absolutely
integral part of whatever it isthat will save us, right? That
art, that to me, art, making andcreativity, are things that can
(56:13):
be present in so many differentrealms and aspects of my life.
And it's but that it is thatsort of creativity and curiosity
that I associate with with art,right, that that space of of
exploration that is so soimportant and so vital, and I
(56:39):
think is, is is an absolutelycentral ingredient to all the
different forces that we aregoing to be needing to to save
us, to save our our ecosystems,our animal the animal world that
(57:00):
We, we are a part of and livewith, because, I think also art
making and and specifically,again, thinking about like
curiosity and creativity, forme, are also so closely related
to empathy, right, that curiosity is where, where
(57:20):
empathy can emerge from. Ifyou're curious about another
being, then it's easier to haveempathy. And that seems like a
really, yeah, just we need moreempathy. And so I think that
that that creativity andcuriosity is part of that to me.
(57:40):
So, so yes, I have, I have faiththat art, that art will save us,
and that it is one of the great,beautiful things about our
species, as our capacity for
creativity. Well, that's such abeautiful answer. So thank you
very much. And, and amazingly,that is the hour flown by. I
(58:03):
always find it goes so veryquickly. So I would really like
to thank you for your generoustime. And I'd also like to
highlight that this episode ispublished on International Peace
Day, which is the 21st ofSeptember. And I was really
pleased to talk to Sunaura,because she has an important
(58:25):
voice that's challengingenvironmental violence and
injustice, the mass ecologicaldisablement of all of us, and
it's an important message tohear, particularly on
International Peace Day. Sothank you again, Sunaura, for all
of your generous time, and thankyou to the listeners, please
share this free to listen serieswherever you can and help make
(58:47):
the arts all of ours. Thank you,Sunaura, very, very much.
Thank you so much Paula,
this was really fun. Iappreciate your wonderful
questions. Bless you.
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